Love Thy Neighbor

 

Hello again! I’m back with more adventures at preschool, along with some kiddo art and some of my own art. Blog posts often bring out my reflective moods, with my looking back at recent events, funny moments and life lessons. A Thanksgiving blog post makes me extra reflective, because it’s a time to think about how fortunate we are.

Sweaty Summer:

Before we talk Thanksgiving, let’s back up a few months.  The summer went quickly, as every teacher has said since the beginning of time. July arrived and a friend hired me to paint a mural in her back yard. The temperature suddenly skyrocketed, and I found myself sweating before even starting to paint. But four toasty days later, I finished the mural and my friend was delighted with the result. She wanted a lush tropical scene on the fence in her yard, with a glimpse of the ocean in the distance. My friend knew exactly which flowers she wanted and we chose the paint colors together. I loved how the mural turned out and was grateful that our timing meshed. It’s been a long time since I regularly painted murals, and most of them were indoors, so this experience reminded me what an endurance sport mural painting really is. 

More Art:

I make art every week. Lately I’ve been into collage, painting over junk mail, ripping it into pieces to glue together. I like it when the original text peeks through. Here are a few of my recent paintings and mixed media art pieces:

Zipper capelet. (Mostly thrifted!) Wearable art!

Back to School:

At the end of summer, I felt a certain degree of dread. Although I was excited to see the preschool kids again, it’s always hard for me to give up the more flexible pace of summer. But when the preschoolers came back to school, their happy faces, questions and enthusiasm made me smile. I noticed how they’d grown, and who had different haircuts. A few of them threw their arms around me when they first saw me, and honestly, this is one of the best feelings in the world.

Lots of our kids from the three-year-old class are no longer at school this year. In our area, public schools now offer free T-K (Transitional Kindergarten) for kids as young as three. I can’t blame the parents for choosing the free option, but it’s bittersweet that the school population is smaller than it was in the spring. In related news, despite having fewer kids at school, the noise level is just as high. But at times, a joyful kid is a loud kid. It’s okay! 

We started up our preschool art studio the second week of school. I do art with each class twice a week and if the weather is cooperative, we create outdoors. Most of the kids love experimenting with paint, shaving cream, finger paint, dot markers, play dough, and paper for collage projects. After the kids helped paint fall leaves, I decorated the pergola over our art area. I wanted it to look like the colorful leaves were falling from the trees above.

 

Halloween: 

Halloween is always fun when you work with kids. They start planning their costumes weeks ahead of time, and their choices are a window into their personalities. One little girl with tons of energy said she wanted to be a ninja. We had princesses, Spider man, Lightning McQueen, and a child dressed as a yellow crayon, among other costumes. The kids did spooky artwork leading up to Halloween. We painted pumpkins and ghosts, bats and cats, which I displayed on our playground wall. 

 I made two haunted houses from cardboard and hot glue, and they had fun painting the houses. I taught the four-year-olds how to make spooky trees from pipe cleaners. You twist pipe cleaners to form branches, which should be gnarled and twisty, full of haunted energy. The kids also cut gravestones, which I glued to form a haunted graveyard. 

Yes, a festive season, indeed. 

Learning our ABCs:

Every preschool teaches the alphabet, colors and numbers. I can almost see the kids’ brains developing, right in front of me. But this fall, I’ve had an interesting experience with one of our new students. She is four, and I will call her M. M speaks Japanese at home, and when she started, her mom said that M does not speak English. I knew she would learn quickly, as kids do. The first week she was in school, I noticed that M does have many English words. True—she doesn’t have as many as her classmates, but M spoke plenty of words. I see her language develop each week. M fascinates me. She is fearless on the playground and full of joy and confidence. She gets her point across, even with gaps in her vocabulary. “I lunch you,” was M’s way of saying she was giving me lunch (a toy plate filled with sand from our sandbox). One day, she noticed two friends fighting over a toy and she ran to me, pointed and said, “Angry!” I hurried over to referee the problem. I love that M is not self-conscious about her developing language skills. She is full of smiles, questions and observations. It’s a good reminder for me: don’t aim for perfection. Aim for happiness. 

Thanksgiving:

In case you haven’t seen all the Christmas and Hannukah decorations in stores, it’s true—it’s Thanksgiving season. The preschool kids made hats for our Friendsgiving party at school. Each child brought a piece of fruit to add to our Friendship fruit salad, a colorful collaboration. The kids sat outdoors together and shared some food and friendship. It was adorable and a wonderful way to talk about Thanksgiving and what we appreciate. The kids helped paint giant pieces of fruit to spill out of the cornucopia I made, and they colored the letters to spell “Thanksgiving.”  

This Thanksgiving, I feel grateful for many people and things. We all have our worries but I’m focusing on the good. I want to share something inspiring that I witnessed this month.

My fellow San Diegans have such big hearts. There are donation bins around town, including in grocery stores, where people can donate food to those who need it. This is something that happens every fall around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it feels extra meaningful this year. When many people’s SNAP food benefits were cut on November first, San Diegans stepped up to help their neighbors. The school our youngest attends immediately sent out an email, asking for donations of non-perishable food. The email listed ideas for donations and assured everyone that the kids could come get what they needed and bring some home to their families. I bought some items and put them in a bag by our front door. A few days passed and before I could bring our bag in, another email came from the principal. The message was this: don’t bring any more food for now. We are at capacity! In a matter of a few days, they received hundreds of items. A plan was suggested to bag up items and leave them for students to pick up at the building next door, so their privacy would be protected. My heart swelled with happiness, seeing how quickly people jumped in to help their neighbors. It’s hard enough being a teenager, without worrying about how your family is going to manage. 

Since I hadn’t donated my bag to school yet, I donated it to the bins inside the grocery store, knowing that people in need will benefit. In case you haven’t been inside the store recently, the bins are already quite full. This really warmed my heart. It shows how kind most people are. I love these moments when people’s differences fade away, and we are united by a common goal to help others. The act of sharing is one of the most fundamental parts of being human. San Diego, you really showed your kindness during the Thanksgiving season.

If anyone needs an extra boost, I would like to share a website called Tank's Good News. Here is the link: Tanks Good News.

This site posts only positive stories about inspiring people and animals. It’s an especially happy place to land when you need a break from negative news. 

So, on this Thanksgiving week, when the sun sets earlier and the night seems darker, I want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Let’s shine a bright light out to our neighbors, and our fellow human beings. Let’s keep sharing and keep shining, too…